The American Society of International Law joins the High-Level Working Group on Gender Persecution co-chaired by Rangita de Silva de Alwis and co- hosted by Penn Carey Law.
The American Society of International Law (ASIL) joins the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School as a co- sponsor of the Expert Working Group on Gender Persecution hosted by Penn Carey Law, NYU Law, and Oxford Bonavero Institute of Human Rights.
Penn Carey Law’s faculty, Rangita de Silva de Alwis is co-chair, along with Baroness Helena Kennedy QC and Catherine Amirfar of a High Level Working Group working with leading Afghan women experts and two Iranian Nobel laureates on several accountability strategies addressing discrimination on the basis of sex under the CEDAW.
“The High-Level Expert Working Group is thrilled to be working in partnership with the American Society of International Law, along with Penn Carey Law, NYU Law, and the Oxford Bonavero Institute of Human Rights,” said Catherine Amirfar, Partner, Co-Chair, International Dispute Resolution & Public International Law Groups and Past President of the American Society of International Law. “As a preeminent voice in international law, ASIL will bring to bear its deep expertise and convening powers to the worthy cause of obtaining justice for women and girls subjected to persecution and oppression throughout the world.
“Since its founding in 1906, the American Society of International Law (ASIL) has been the pre-eminent scholarly society in the international law field. For more than a century, its publications, conferences, and research and educational programs have advanced the study and use of international law as a cornerstone of a just and peaceful world.”
De Silva de Alwis added, “In August, coinciding with the third anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the Taliban appointed Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice adopted a 114-page long set of formal laws which among others, mandate that a woman’ s voice should not be heard singing, reciting, or reading in public and banning the travel of unaccompanied women. Although over 100 edicts affecting women and girls have been passed over the last three years, this is the first formal declaration of vice and virtue laws.”
The co-chairs’ paper, “Closing the Accountability Gap and Redrawing the Boundaries of International Law: An ‘All Tools’ Approach to Addressing Systemic Discrimination on the Basis of Sex,” provides additional information on the work of the High-Level Working Group. In the paper, they examine the accountability gap and the vice and virtue edicts adopted by the Taliban, The paper will be used by the CEDAW Committee as a background document as it prepares for a human rights dialogue with Afghanistan at the 90th Session of the CEDAW in February 2025.
It is also forthcoming in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.
From the paper:
On the third anniversary of the second Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, this article analyzes the Taliban regime’s flagrant violations of fundamental human rights of women and girls against the guarantees enshrined in the CEDAW Convention. Furthermore, the paper closely examines the Special Rapporteur of Afghanistan’s “all tools” approach where “[t]he full commitment of the international community and its institutions is needed to oppose the architecture of oppression enshrined by” the Taliban and “[w]ithout concerted action, these harms will reverberate down the generations and potentially across the world.” Our article has a larger ambition, one that goes beyond the empowerment of Afghan women and girls toward a transformative project, strengthening the very foundational principles of international law to protect against gender-based discrimination and oppression more broadly. Women have historically existed on the margins of international law and the canonical cases before international tribunals. The resulting silence signals that women are not makers of law–especially international law. Our article offers several examples to illustrate how centering women and correcting their erasure from international law is essential to the pursuit of justice.